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Have you used live video to climb the corporate ladder?

Live video is quickly coming of age as a way to quickly disseminate information to large, engaged audiences. Enterprise users have been our fastest growing segment, and we recently partnered with Wainhouse Research to gather more insight into this growing movement.

Last week, we released the first report in our ongoing Business Video Now series, entitled “Executive Visions of Video in the Workplace.” After surveying 1000+ executives, we got a baseline view into perceived effectiveness of live video in the workplace. Download the full paper here.

In case you missed it, Brad Hunstable, Ustream CEO and founder, and Steve Vonder Haar, Wainhouse senior analyst, hosted an interactive webinar today to talk about the findings. One of the most interesting stats was a correlation between executive level and live video. As you can see in the graph below, perceived effectiveness varies greatly by title. This certainly begs the question: can educating yourself and deploying live video help vault you to the top?

Obviously, it’s not this cut and dry; much of this can be attributed to access. By no surprise, C-level execs have the highest level of access to video as compared to associates (and others in between).

However, Vonder Haar predicts that associates will soon catch up to their superiors, as live video will become an everyday asset within their business communications toolkit. An excerpt from the white paper:

“…any executive with aspirations of climbing the corporate ladder may be well advised to educate themselves on the benefits that come with deploying the technology.”

Productivity is key

As with any technology solution, adoption most certainly comes with barriers. Based on the survey results, cost and complexity were the most cited factors. However, what’s key to note is that once a user utilizes live video, their perceived barriers shit. The chart below shows how perception changes with experience, most notably that live video improves productivity, generates revenue, and cuts down travel costs.

Seeing is believing

Overall, 72% of respondents prefer live video, compared to 28% that favor video-on-demand. We’re not yet at the tipping point, but we know we’re on to something and we’re continuing to expand our enterprise business to meet this growing trend. Take a look at this chart below, which illustrates perceived effectiveness of live video business communications, depending on usage.

Early next year, we’ll have more research to share. If you’d like to watch the full webinar, press play below.